The recently concluded elections in Karnataka saw the Congress and the JD(S) form a government in a post-poll alliance, but not before the state stood witness to a weeks-long political drama before the government could begin functioning. However, many in the Congress and the JD(S), who formed the government and levelled horse-trading charges and offers of crores of rupees to form the government from the opposing side of the political spectrum, already happen to be crorepatis.
An analysis of the assets declared by 26 of the 27 ministers of the state cabinet, 25 are crorepatis. Leader from BSP, N Mahesh, is the only one who is not a crorepati among the analysed ministers, a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms has revealed.
Source: ADRThe report, titled, Analysis of Criminal Background, Financial, Gender and other details of Ministers in the Karnataka Assembly 2018, brings out a complete analysis of the wealth, liabilities and criminal cases of the ministers.
According to the analysis, the average assets of 26 ministers is Rs 76.08 crores. One MLC and the only woman minister, Jayamala has not been analysed as her affidavit was not available at the time of making the report.
Source: ADRCongress leader D. K. Shivakumar is the richest among the ministers. He has declared Rs. 840.01 crore as his assets.
The top five wealthiest ministers ministers are D. K. Shivakumar (Rs 840 crore), R Shankar (Rs 265 crore) from Karnataka Pragnyavantha Janatha Party, Deshpande Raghunath Vishwanath (Rs 215 crore) from INC, H D Kumaraswamy (Rs 167 crore) from JD(S) and Ramesh Laxmanrao Jarkiholi (Rs 122 crore) from INC.
Source: ADRInterestingly, these five ministers hold around 78 percent of the total wealth of the 25 ministers.
Seven out of 26 ministers have declared their total annual income above Rs. 1 crore. They are, Kelachandra Joseph George from INC with declared income Rs 2. 68 crore. The next in line is Deshpande Raghunath Vishwanath with Rs 3.15 crore, H D Kumaraswamy with Rs 1.53 crore, S R Srinivas from JD(S) with Rs 1.41 crore, D. C. Thammanna from JD(S) with 1.16 crore, D K Shivakumar with Rs 1.08 crores and H D Revanna with Rs 1.01 crore income.
Source: ADRApart from the wealth, several ministers, including the CM Kumaraswamy, have declared criminal cases in their election affidavit.
Seven ministers including the Chief Minister have declared criminal cases against themselves and four ministers including the Chief Minister have declared serious criminal cases.
Source: ADRThe chief minister has eight cases, under 23 serious IPC sections, Congress minister D V Shivakumar has four cases against him, in which one is serious IPC section.
Other ministers with cases against them are Venkatrao Nadagouda, with two cases, two serious IPC. B.Z. Zameer Ahmed Khan, one case, two serious IPC. Ramesh Laxmanrao Jarkiholi with one case and D.C.Thammanna and N Mahesh with one case each filed against them.
The affidavits for the analysis were obtained from the ECI website (www.eci.nic.in) with nomination papers as the source of the analysis, ADR said in a statement.
